I don't understand the question and I won't respond to it.

It is not every damn week that one gets to witness a near total eclipse of the freaking sun and watch a storm be upgraded from tropical to category III hurricane headed straight for the Texas coast within the very same week, and the fact that some will get to experience both the totality of eclipse and eyewall of Hurricane from the safety of their own backyard is simply fascinating to me…I mean, what the fuck are the odds?

I am not a betting man per se, but I do appreciate probability, the confluence of unrelated events, the evangelical nuttiness of Texas, and cannot help but wonder a couple of things…I have had to wonder how quickly the Fundigelical Swiss accounts have been fattening during the first year of the Victory of the TurDumpo and any number of cynical promises he might fullfill for them, such as (for interest and shits@grins™) the second coming of jeebus xmas, the whole revelations endgame fantasy baseball shootin arn match™ among a holee effing hosts of other grifting opportunities all the while returning Amercia to her antebellum roots after draping his cock and balls fishing tackle upon every doornkob in the place, you know, because he can…I would apologize for sharing these thoughts brief though they are, but as a wise man once stated, misery loves company…

Anyway for those of you who might be in the path of harms way, I hope that you have battened down the hatches gotten the hell out of the way and are otherwise safe and secure, because shit is going to get real…And I will have to admit that I am just a bit jealous, because I am a weather nerd and would like to actually see one of those…I am always jealous of that one weatherchannel dude who films from the beach as the eye crosses overhead…

Anyhow, landfall has been made:
https://icons.wxug.com/data/weather-maps/radar/united-states/united-states-current-radar.gif

In 22 days some of us in these United States will get to observe one of Natures most amazing displays, a total eclipse of the sun. Now the event itself happens with a surprising amount of frequency But they pop up in random parts of the world and are only visible in a narrow band along the path cut by the shadow of the moon as it crosses between planet and star…For those of us not within that narrow band we will be able to observe a partial eclipse, and those are very cool as well…but this one is as close as I been to one, and 94% of the sun blocked will be impressive but this being possibly the first thing I ever put on my bucket list, before I ever knew such a thing existed, compels me to conspire to make an attempt to make it to totality. And I would suggest that any of you reading this make a similar attempt if you are able…

Ok so I thought I’d share the funniest thing I saw online in possibly the last six months…

And not only because I have recently resolved a personal kitten shortage, and have become reacquainted with all of the wonderful if annoying manifestations of the feline personality, that present themselves such as to guarantee that they are in the main, each one, their own being. As in “U-fucking-neek!” And as the little one is a bit too young for swearing, I’ll still have to figure out what the translation into words of some of her activities may end up being in time…

The water bowl not 20 minutes filled has been relocated at least 22 inches from its initial placement, and it is now as I write being relocated another 6 inches to the right…And this of course is directly in the way of a path to the door, as if placed to trip me, should I have not witnessed the change and changed the mental map as a result…

Now what this has to do with the world? nothing really, just a pleasant diversion from the increasing fantasy land of ‘Republican Governance,’ The Ryan Administration addition, and now that the dishes are done and the water for the potatoes a-boil we can continue…Where I once woke up with a start wrapped nicely in an are you effing me blanket, things have mellowed into a Yeah this is not in fact a dream, The withering peniled tiny fingered collossal Ass still bestrides the world like that mashup of every portrayal of horrible leadership ever turned into a work of art…From Plato to Shakespeare to Twain and beyond, an archetypal figure of a man well beyond his depth and defiantly ignorant of the fact…graced pages in story to provide structure, coherence, frustration and realism, with the intent to distract us a bit from our own troubles not to cause them, to prepare us for possibilities not necessarily demand response…

This is where the train stops today, because breakfast and coffee await, And I am still failing to get a proper night of rest…

Take care friends and sieze every bit of life out of today, And hopefully after shitting the dog and spending some time in good company and getting some cookie dough made, the muse will return restored!

We’re a troll society now, a kakistocracy. 2016 was months of people going “If you elect that woman, we are going to make the next four years HELL. Here’s a preview.” No wonder so many people retreated into A Pox on Both Their Houses. There was enough awful being thickly enough spread that it probably did seem like it was coming from everywhere.

And it did seem to work and the hows and whys have been something of a personal obsession of mine since that shit went down….And as I am currently blessed with an abundance of time with limited distraction the ciphering of this conundrum has become something of an obsession,and takes a bit of time….And aside from the usual bag of bullshit and lies from which our society has always been composed, pressures that have always been extant, it remains a fascination that I can’t shake loose of…. A constant that is in another sense, infinite. And in this sense it represents the universal… and is some senses the absolute…I, being a curious sort, have wondered what ancient was compelled to solve a problem and spent his time working out the relationship between a circle and its diameter, and while I vaguely remember that there was an old greek who was credited with its codification, there are other theories as well: Aliens, a Time Traveling Future Man™.*

In any event, that fascination has crept back into the foreground, In part I believe to serve as a distraction from the day to day completely frustrating obsession with making sense of the Trumpnominon™

And it occurred to me the last night as I was attempting to see how much of that number that I could claw back from memory, and now I know…

*given the amount of time I have spent attempting to memorize the number to 20 or more siginficant digits

An example of some stuff I missed while shitting the dog, that was transpiring on another blog in my absence title stolen from stream of commentary yakishness! I happen to have been well acquainted with a few of these goofs and this is something that not only am I upset to have missed in real time, with every likelihood of having torpedo’d the groove /Occam wont let me lie!

But that did not occur, and what transpired in a short period of time was brilliant…And I can almost be certain that it was not choreographed in any fashion, which if it had been would have been brilliant…

It is early in the AM at the hunkered down Midwestern Regional Offices™ for the once and hopefully future industrial-grade snark dispensary: Sadly,No! And I just got up. As in, (is there still coffee in the pot?) cool! Might as well get up, heat some up and listen to the sounds of a spring morning in a charming University town in Gilead in the state from which comes our once and future king Penceslas™!

On a morning like this, well most of them recently, to be perfectly honest, start this way…Heat up or make some effing coffee and catch up on any fresh hell that might have transpired while off the clock (my nickname for sleep, when she will have me, that is); which means getting on line and discovering that the Internet still works, the lights are still on; and if lucky: Finding the adolescent feline beast a-purr in bed next to me as happened to be the case a few some odd minutes ago. Following that a quick dash across the ‘trons is in order and a catchup and cleanup of previous threads in which I may have left traces or questions unanswered when I bounced.

That finished I decided to look in on Mr Edroso, as it had been a couple of days and whenever we happen to luck into his graces is a good day whether at the Voice or at his own Place. Which is where this morning started with a post titled: YOU THINK YOU CAN KILL ME EASY? Graced with a picture of Olivier from his turn in a movie that I believe is called the Marathon man, a mid seventies think piece and possibly one of the better films of the era and a veritable South African Diamond mine or Memetic Trope-ulon if you will for that late 20th century Cold War catch in our collective throat, that we thought we might clear out with a healthy cough that phlegmed out Reagan, and since that didn’t work and because we have gone round the bend once again we Try, once again Hacking and Wheezing and finally coughing up Trump.

So I manage to get to the front page, see the picture of Olivier and get this far before firing up this tab

Don’t get your hopes up. As I keep saying, he gives them the policies they want, and they let him grift; that’s the arrangement. Why would they blow the deal now?

I know, Pence; but the American people — or at least a near-plurality of them — didn’t vote for Barebones Feargod; most of them findsmall-smiling Mother-wived Bible creeps like him as repulsive as you do; if they didn’t, they’d have nominated Ted Cruz.

The whole thing is a well engineered delivery system for a finely…not gonna get that one to port sings! But this small-smiling Mother-wived bible creeps along with Barebones Feargod are two for the ages in one clause. They stopped me in my tracks and motivated me to pen this nonsense…So I should probably finish the piece, get back to sleep, give this one a look or walk through upon waking. I swear to dog, if that had been my only exposure to the wonder that is Roy, coming across a reminder would always bring a smile to my face….Thanks man!

Hello Good WhatevertimeofdayitmightbewhenIgetthisonethroughtheslousegates Friends, SadlyNauts, and other Passengers of Earth I thought you might enjoy a visit from these adorable little critters because they are adorable, and also happen to each be wearing the expression that I do upon waking in the morning and realizing that yet another un-plated serving of fail, awaits my discovery for consumption and analysis of its impact on my immediate future.

Four little heads, eight piercing eyes one depression in the sand waiting in rapt attention for their mother and or father to bring home something to break the fast.

And with that palate cleanser on the table, let us see what Dear Leader has managed to do to get David Brooks lathered up, because if that professional cannot muck Trump’s Stable and come out with a bar of Gold, then we might have a problem…

At certain times Donald Trump has seemed like a budding authoritarian, a corrupt Nixon, a rabble-rousing populist or a big business corporatist.

But as Trump has settled into his White House role, he has given a series of long interviews, and when you study the transcripts it becomes clear that fundamentally he is none of these things.

At base, Trump is an infantalist. There are three tasks that most mature adults have sort of figured out by the time they hit 25., Trump has mastered none of them. Immaturity is becoming the dominant note of his presidency, lack of self-control his leitmotif.
First, most adults have learned to sit still. But mentally, Trump is still a 7-year-old boy who is bouncing around the classroom. Trump’s answers in these interviews are not very long — 200 words at the high end — but he will typically flit through four or five topics before ending up with how unfair the press is to him.

Remember, this is David Brooks ‘Britzing’ in the Paper of Record on possibly the most prestigious piece of editorial Real Estate in the Country in what might be considered trumps own home town rag going on like he does when he is on one of his tours of the heartland examining the ways of people of the salted earth…Examining the subject like something unknown, unrecognizable, as if he had never before seen this person in the wild….. Or never had a cup of coffee within sight of the tower on which Trump’s name is plastered. I mean I get it, he is talking past these shoulders and speaking to a heartland Golem, quite possibly one who I might have crossed paths with within the last week, or seen in these wilds with my own two eyes, but he is not talking about me, he can’t be.

For one: I have been out of Fritters Indiana on more than one occasion, I also have something that passes for an education, if only of the hardscrabble kind, and I have ridden a bicycle down fifth avenue in Manhattan, right past Trump Tower in fact, and to be honest, I did not appreciate it at the time, being concerned with traffic and what not, but later it was pointed out to me and the next time I approached I made sure to take a look at the magnificence of its creation, and marvel at the gilt appointments, opulent splendor, knowing that my laughter would fill the foyer should I cross the threshold because it could only be more tasteless inside….(Bring it back to Brooks)

He is thus the all-time record-holder of the Dunning-Kruger effect, the phenomenon in which the incompetent person is too incompetent to understand his own incompetence.

Which is like saying someone is the world record holder for “The Kleptomania effect.” As in, if I did not just pull that one out of my ass, and it was a real thing, as in, a psychological conditional reality, there still would still be no world records, for there is a) no competition involved, b) not an Olympic sport or c) a Guinness category. But if I had to guess, Brooksie might just be setting a trap, or taking this opportunity phone it in, knowing, or suspecting as he must, that he must find a good distance in which to take cover, so he is out of the way when the walls fall down, and can be on the ground floor running, when the Conservative Siren song calls from the rubble…

Trump thought he’d be celebrated for firing James Comey. He thought his press coverage would grow wildly positive once he won the nomination. He is perpetually surprised because reality does not comport with his fantasies.

It would have been helpful if Trump had been a real mastermind at anything other than winning the lottery and being an entertaining buffoon…

Third, by adulthood most people can perceive how others are thinking. For example, they learn subtle arts such as false modesty so they won’t be perceived as obnoxious.

I picture that last bit as his glasses talking to him as he puts them on after shaving in the morning, so that he makes it to his desk without getting beat by a random dude on the street.

I came across this series of Tweets from Dear Leader this morning and after /ratchet jack with jaw gag, ala Bugs and Elmer/ wondered again, if this was another salvo in this re-production of a mashup of mid twentieth century absurdist Theatre.

What rendered this rant necessary was stumbling across a series of Tweets from Dear Leader that demonstrate a level of understanding that would probably been challenged in scope and accurracy by my seven year old self:

Donald J. Trump ? @realDonaldTrump
As a very active President with lots of things happening, it is not possible for my surrogates to stand at podium with perfect accuracy!….

And a nation, at least the sentient portion of it whose paths these have crossed one of these tweets may have required one of these to aid the lifting and relocating of the jaw to its proper place…But we might need something of even more industrial quality, because I keep looking back at the tweet and find my jaw hitting the ground again…Yes, that guy, is still demonstrating his Executive acumen as well as his telling* abilities…(*telling in this case refers to those times that a toddler in your life who has just discovered one of the great truths of the world wishes to share it with you with the urgency that such a discovery demands.)

One might be inclined to believe that he has just now begun to understand that Presidenting is Hard. And the fact that he does not even have the sense, as have all of his predecessors, of hiding that fact from everybody if only as a matter of national security, as has every president before him has done…Because to be real, every last president during the last 100 years or so, has had to deal with what, has to be a substantial learning curve, and like students everywhere
It is taking time to process, and like narcissists everywhere he has to demonstrate a certainty of acumen, while at the same time suggesting that the job is actually beneath him. And he is terrified of everything and at all times that he will finally be discovered to be the fraud that his money has always been round to provide cover.

I remember a night in early November 1972…Staying up a bit later than would normally be usual for that seven and a half year old me, but my parents were restless, and by then I had demonstrated a precocious and very curious nature and by then had an idea about the importance of the Presidential election, and that my parents who had worked quite hard on McGovern’s behalf, often with me in tow allowed me to stay up past my bedtime to watch the returns come in in what finished up being a relatively early evening that ended in an air of disappointment…More than that, because while Watergate was yet to be uncovered to dominate the news, it was clear at the time that Nixon was, or had, a series of problems though nobody at the time thought that they might bring the whole thing down…

Fast forward fourty five years and we have yet another paranoid, immature authoritarian
man-child in office whose goat is so easily acquired and whose skin is so damn thin as to be nearly transluscent, that I wonder how exactly he made all his money……Yeah I know If I started out standing on an enormous pile of money and Rental property left to me by my father in the richest market in the world, even the avatar I use, Cletus could have managed to remain a millionaire, as would any random goat on the street. So, for that, I will give Donald a little bit of credit, backhanded though it might be, which brings me to another first week in may tradition, the Kentucky Derby, which I happened to catch a bit of yesterday.

As I was watching some of the Pre-game run-up I discovered that one of the contenders was a one eyed guy named ‘Patch’. He would have become one I would have rooted for at any year in the past, before I lost an eye myself, because I have always had a thing for underdogs and broken things, especially the triumphant and beautiful and again as far as I am concerned a horse is just a very large container filled with kittens and having a very skittish mien so of course, I am drawn to them when I have the opportunity to meet one or more up close and personal (and if I know in advance of a meeting opportunity, a box of sugar cubes or a small portion thereof accompanies me on the trip, because I am not opposed to bribery when i comes to luring and or securing the confidence of the skittish!

Anyhoo I just woke up about 20 minutes ago (0400) heated up the last of the coffee and realized that I might want to make some more room in the freezer by finishing off one of the 3 bins of Ice-cream in the fridge in order to one: to make room for another, two to have some early morning Ice-cream and enjoy it with impunity because I can, three because it tastes so very delicious and finally, because i am back on the bike and if I have made it back to my fighting weight (150lbs give or take a couple, with appetite returned, being able to eat with impunity is a pleasure) if I am being generous I would be surprised. Without a scale handy and judging from previous experience I would bet that I am sitting at about 142-146lbs about now…And I can assure you that curiosity will demand that I check and pedantry will assure you that I will share…

Among the last things that I wanted to get off of my chest was a mention of my ‘Clatch of Bitches’! Over the years, I have managed to develop some very deep and enduring friendships with women who were young ladies when we initially met some of them had been co-workers or roommates or friends of friends to whom I became very close and one of them is married to my drummer Al…Danielle and I crossed paths when I was working at a bakery and she was working on a BFA and dating another old friend of mine. eventually she started working at the same bakery and we became closer eventually getting to become really good friends and then we became housemates…Around this time I had recently become adept at playing the bass guitar and before I knew it I was gigging regularly with two bands and in one of them was a drummer who I knew from highschool, but had gone to the other of two such schools in my town, but fortunately there was a certain amount of cross pollination among circles and the magic of venn put the two of us in overlapping portions of the same and it was made clear to me at one point that my buddy Al fancied my buddy Danielle (who had also made some positive statements regarding my buddy) Now I am not a yenta, and at the time managed to have a crippling difficulty in managing to summon the courage to ask a lady for a cup of coffee or a lunchdate, but Dan and I were working in a Bakery together and Al and I were in a band together and both had indicated to me an interest in the other, so I had no choice but to set it up, especially knowing that Al was a bit shy when it came to the ladies As was I, but I was fairly certain that this one would be a good match so I did what I felt necessary…And ended up in the wedding party, and the two of them are still married, have raised two wonderful young adults, and remain among my best friends…

Apologies for the detour from our regular fair but if I had to guess the anniversary is closing in and I feel I should do something nice for them, and this represents a start…